An object of the present invention is a terminal for payment by chip cards that can be used chiefly by tradesmen, especially tradesmen who have to travel frequently.
A standard chip-card payment terminal comprises a chip-card reader linked with a keyboard, a display screen, a transmission means (normally a modem) and a microprocessor that manages the interconnection between the different peripherals.
A payment operation with a terminal of this kind is carried out as follows. A bank type chip card belonging to a customer is inserted into the slot of the reader of the terminal. During this session, the bearer of the chip card is asked to key in a secret identification PIN code on the keyboard of the terminal. This secret code is sent on to the chip card which ascertains that the keyed-in secret code corresponds to an expected secret code. Furthermore, other security operations may be undertaken. They may concern especially the authentication of the chip card by the reader as well as the authentication of the reader by the chip card. These authentication operations enable each of the two units respectively to verify that the unit with which they are linked is an authentic unit and not a falsified one.
Once these preliminary operations have been performed, or prior to their performance, the payment terminal is used to key in a payment message. This payment message comprises essentially an indication of an amount, an indication of the identity of the debiting party and an indication of the identity of a creditor. The indication of the amount is keyed in by the tradesman through the keyboard, preferably before the verification operation. Consequently, the operation of verifying the holder of the chip card is equivalent, at the same time, to consent to payment. The fact of keying in his secret code becomes, in itself, an act of consent to make payment. The identity of the debiting party is taken, especially during the preliminary verification operations, from the chip card. The indication of the debiting party may relate to a serial number of his chip card. This number is used by a financial institution to retrieve his bank account number. Or else, this identity is the bank account number itself, encrypted or non-encrypted, with or without matching consistency codes. The creditor tradesman""s identity is taken normally from the payment terminal given to the tradesman by his financial institution. With these three pieces of information, and if the secret code is correctly keyed in, the terminal prepares the payment message. In practice, this message is a numerical sequence, at least stored in a working memory of the terminal.
Once the payment message has been prepared, the terminal can send it to a payment-message collection circuit of its financial institution. This sending operation is done by a modem contained in the terminal. The sending operation may be done in real time or in deferred time. It is done in real time when the amount of the transaction is above a limit or when the type of chip card of the debiting party inserted into the reader requires it or for any other reason, for example when the number of transactions performed with the reader becomes greater then a certain number. When the sending is done in real time, the financial institution transmits a return message that takes account of the payment or refuses to take account of payment. This taking-into-account message is enciphered and stored in correspondence with the payment message in a storage memory of the terminal. For message-sending operations in deferred time, generally done at night, all the payment messages collected during the day by a payment terminal are transmitted to the financial organization which executes them, without any possibility of rejection.
On the whole, payment by chip card provides great security to the creditor. Such a creditor therefore naturally tends to prefer payments made in this way to any other form of payment, possibly even payment in cash because then there is no risk of his being robbed of the sums paid to him.
When a tradesman is traveling, it is provided that the modem will be replaced by an instrument capable of getting linked up to the financial institution by means of a mobile telephony network. The working of a mobile terminal of this kind is then similar to that of the standard chip-card payment terminal, except that the transmission is done by a mobile telephony network. The information exchanged in this case is exchanged in a data mode, or even by means of SMS (Short Message Service) transmissions.
However, this mode of transmission has one drawback. Indeed, In addition to the price of the mobile terminal itself, the cost of mobile telephony communications is high. Even if the calls are short, they lead to a substantial increase in the tradesman""s working expenses.
To resolve this problem of cost, such a tradesman will then have to acquire not only his mobile terminal but also a fixed terminal connected to the switched telephone network through which he can make transactions when he is in his shop. In certain businesses, the cost of the terminal, whose technology changes frequently, is a hardly acceptable burden, especially if two of them have to be purchased. Furthermore, for companies using the services of a traveling agent, the double machines increases with the number of their agents.
The invention resolves this problem of cost by providing for a mobile terminal capable of choosing a mode of transmission from a selection of at least two possible mode of transmission. A first possible transmission mode is then a mode using a mobile telephony network, the other mode being a transmission mode that uses the switched telephone network and is less costly. In a preferred version, to carry out the transmission by the switched telephony network, which is a public network, the payment terminal will be associated with a private base station. In this case, the mobile terminal will be capable of sending out radio transmissions to the public mobile telephony network when it cannot send out radio transmissions to its private base station. In particular in this case, the mobile terminal will be a terminal compliant with a DECT type standard and will be provided, in particular, with every improvement available to instruments of this type.
These improvements will comprise especially the automatic selection of a preferred transmission mode. This preferred mode could naturally be preferably the switched telephony mode for which the cost of transmission is low. The automatic selection can be done in a usual way by systematic interrogation from the base to find out if the mobile terminal is in its radio environment. If it is, the mobile terminal reports its presence to the base and the same time switches over its mode of use.
If need be, in modes of use known as the called Home Service modes, it may be planned that the mobile terminal will continue to use the mobile telephony network but at preferential price scales for payment message communications, these preferential price scales being quite comparable to the low price scales of the switched telephony network. In this case, the private base informs the mobile telephony network and/or the switched telephony network that it has diverted the calls sent to this mobile terminal to the switched telephony number or vice versa. Through this procedure, the instrument of the invention provides a dual service: it keeps the tradesman""s private telephone line available while granting him the expected reduction in price scales.
An object of the invention therefore is a chip-card payment terminal comprising means to produce a payment message and means to transmit this payment message to a financial institution, characterized in that the transmitting means comprise means to select one transmission mode among several modes.